Community Climate Action

In October 2020 the innovative Community Climate Action project launched with support from the National Lottery’s Climate Action Fund. The project sees six Bristol community organisations – Ambition Lawrence Weston, ACH, Bristol Disability Equality Forum, Heart of BS13, Lockleaze Neighbourhood Trust, and Eastside Community Trust play a leading role in shaping Bristol’s transition to a low carbon and climate resilient city. 

Collectively these community organisations represent the diverse demographic of Bristol whilst also including some of the less heard community voices in the climate change debate.

During 2021, the six community partners are actively engaging with their communities and collaborating with Bristol Green Capital Partnership, Bristol City Council and the Centre for Sustainable Energy to identify community priorities and coproduce community climate action plans, supporting Bristol’s efforts to become carbon neutral by 2030 at a community-level.

The action plans will focus on improving the quality life for local people whilst simultaneously reducing carbon emissions and the project is underpinned by the principle of coproduction. Each community partner has developed a unique approach to engage and inspire their communities with conversations around climate action, within the challenging context of the recovery from covid.

Once the community climate action plans are developed (late 2021), the community partners and BGCP aim to collaborate with strategic partners in the city and beyond to implement the priorities identified and catalyse tangible community-led action climate action leading to a Just Transition.

For more information on the project please contact our Community Project Manager Amy Harrison on: amy@bristolgreencapital.org, or join the Partnership to receive regular updates.

You can also find out why our community partners are excited about community-led climate action in our short project film.

Community Carbon Footprints

The carbon footprint reports are an innovative way of supporting community level climate action. Earlier this year CSE and partners launched ‘Impact’, a tool providing high level carbon footprinting for civil parishes; however collating this data for inner city electoral ward communities and demographic communities (eg. Disabled people or a refugee community within a city) is an approach being pioneered through the Community Climate Action project.

Having an understanding of the activities responsible for carbon emissions and to what extent, helps to identify which key areas of change are most needed to reduce emissions and create positive change. It also reveals where change can be made by individuals and by communities, and where broader systemic change – at the city, national and global levels – is required. The Community Climate Action project is a fantastic opportunity to explore the role that data can have in supporting and guiding community climate action. The lessons learned from this will help CSE and others working at this ‘data-community climate action’ interface to improve their methods, and lessons learned will be shared with community groups across the UK through the lottery’s Climate Action Fund.

Mayors Blog during COP26

Climate action in Lawrence Weston – The Bristol Mayor
Donna Sealey from Ambition Lawrence Weston writes about her community’s climate action plan, and building England’s largest wind turbine.